‘Cupertino’s Renée Elise Goldsberry Teases New Side of Nichole After Fiery Introduction

Cupertino brought out the “big guns” in its third episode, titled “Juno” — specifically, Renée Elise Goldsberry‘s Nichole E. Ferebee, a hotshot attorney with a delicate past with Michael Price (Mike Colter).

The case of the day centered on a chatbot accused of seducing a teen boy and encouraging him to kill his father. Michael and Olivia (Rachel Keller) represented the boy’s mother, the titular Juno (Marin Ireland), in a suit against the company that made the AI app. They were encouraged to take the case — to stop a motion to dismiss — by Natalia Boutella (Busy Philipps) because her ex-husband, who left her in the cold when she turned 40, was the head of the company in question and helped create the offending tech.

Though Natalia was worried about the first lawyer representing ChatLife, it was only after the hearing started to tilt in Price & Siffre’s favor that they faced some real competition: Nichole’s arrival left Michael floored to the point that he decided to hand over cross-examination duties to the still-very-green Olivia. Though Olivia held her own, the case started to fall apart under Nichole’s guidance — particularly a tough examination of the mother that revealed some inattention to her son. However, in the nick of time, Michael realized the NDA Natalia’s ex put her under didn’t apply to pre-marital conversations, including one that undermined his sympathetic stance on creating the app for his disabled nephew, whom he mocked in the revealed correspondence. The judge did not like that, and thus, the motion to dismiss was denied.

It looked like ChatLife might just settle, rather than go to trial, but when Nichole arrived at Price & Siffre to negotiate in their snazzy new conference room, she got the inevitable call announcing the company was filing for bankruptcy and thus would not pay out on the case.

Elsewhere in the episode, Michael shared with Natalia a brief history of his former romance with Nichole, claiming that she left him for his partner after he asked her to marry him. But is that the whole story?

TV Insider caught up with Renée Elise Goldsberry to talk about the sharp introduction of her Cupertino counterpart and get a sense of what’s next for Nichole in the series.

Your character has such a great introduction. They start out by talking about her as “the big guns,” and then we see her walk up in her fabulous suit. What did you think of her first moments?

Renée Elise Goldsberry: I think the Kings know how to write an entrance. It’s very exciting to get to live out these awesome characters and relationships and situations they dream of. I’ve gotten to do it before, and it’s exciting because even though I’ve worked with them before, this world is different than any I’ve seen them do or been in; even playing with the same actors, it feels really brand new and fresh, and that’s been a joy for me.

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I’ll never forget that very cold day when I got to walk up to him, pretending like I was in California. But really, it felt like a reunion for me, and to be reliving something you’ve enjoyed — like relationships with crew, relationships with producers, relationships with actors — in a world that I haven’t really seen anybody tackle or try to figure out before has been really special. There’s something nostalgic and also something brand new.

I wanted to ask about the character’s mindset. Nichole tells Michael, when she first sees him, that she took the gig at ChatLife just for the chance to compete against him. Do you think that was true, or was she just trying to get in his head?

I think both things are true. I think there’s something professional and something personal always happening between the two characters, which is so lovely, and I think sexy because you can never really tell which angle they’re playing in a moment, but they both always exist.

Do you think she considers it a surrender on his part that he immediately just has Olivia do the cross instead of facing her?

I do. And then it’s surprising. As a fan of the show myself, it’s interesting to see what a leader he is, and that’s actually true for his character and for Mike Colter. He’s a very interesting leader because he does definitely empower the [team] — he’s the only one with experience on his team — and I think it’s very interesting for Nichole to see him trust a lot of people that don’t have the breadth of experience that the two of them have. And I think there’s a lot to learn for her in that because he’s quite successful at it, and I think that’s also true for just this wonderful team of actors. There’s some people that have been around for a while, and a couple people that are surprisingly new in the space of working in King shows, and it ends up being a really wonderful marriage of both.

In the courtroom, Nichole goes pretty hard on the mother of the boy who had done the killing. Do you think there’s any part of her that regrets or is hesitant to get low like that and to talk about her motherhood and personal relationships, or is she just all business?

I imagine that people that work in the legal system believe so much in the way that it was designed — that everybody deserves the best representation and that when everybody is fighting appropriately for their side, everyone actually wins because that’s the way that structure was designed to work so well. So I think, especially when you’re staring down somebody that’s just as powerful, she feels like it’s a fair fight and she understands what her role is. I think she knows. I mean, there is this possible interpretation that she’s in it for the money, but I actually believe, while the money is deserved because of how good she is, she truly believes in the role that she’s born to play.

Elizabeth Fisher / CBS

Later in the episode, we get to learn about her relationship with Michael and the backstory about her infidelity and refusing his proposal. Did that surprise you at all when you read about that? And are we going to learn more about this as the season progresses?

Very smart question, and it’s really kind of the thing that’s so interesting for me as an actor is that I’m on a David and Goliath show, and I represent Goliath. And perhaps another team of writers might leave it at that and let us believe that what’s real in the world is the perspective of the hero at all times. But I think this team is so wonderful at the worlds they create and the characters that they build that you should absolutely always expect that they might flip the script and show you a different side of the story.

The episode ends with her coming in and taking that call. The way you were playing it, it seemed to me like she knew that this was going to happen, that they were going to file bankruptcy, but she still showed up maybe as a power move. Did you read it that way, too?

You’re absolutely right. I think she showed up as a power move to play the game in a world with all of this technology. It is funny when people show up for meetings. Yeah, it’s great because it means shooting days and getting to see this character in the world of the show, which I love for many reasons. But in terms of an actor’s objective for a character’s motivation, absolutely every time she can see him and get some glimpse of what’s going on in this world, [she takes it], because she knows a different Michael and I think she’s incredibly curious. And I do believe she’s also there for personal reasons, and so she showed up knowing where this was going and being excited about taking the win in person.

We got to see some Episode 4 stills of you with Busy and boxing gloves. What’s ahead with that? 

There’s a lot of reunions going on in Cupertino for me, especially shooting a show so close to the theater district and for two writers who are such big fans of the theater world as well. So it’s just an embarrassment of riches in terms of the talent that comes across the screen playing all of these wonderful characters. It’s really great, and one of them is one of my greatest friends, Busy Philipps. We just got to work together. We met in Girls5Eva, and it is thrilling to get to explore our on-screen chemistry in this new world. I also love it because I’m just such a fan of her work, and, having played opposite a very different kind of character — we were both playing very different characters on Girls5Eva — it’s fun as actors to get to do something new and just really geek out about the level of power and talent of somebody that you love as much as I love her.

So it sounds like it’ll be a bonding experience for Nichole and Natalia?

It’s very interesting. I think it’s a sizing up because there’s two formidable women in those two roles, and we haven’t really met, and we’re on opposite sides of the table. And I feel like we discover an opportunity that we didn’t anticipate to size each other up and figure out what we’re dealing with, and that’s something that I’ve enjoyed them continuing to play throughout this first season.

Cupertino, Thursdays, 10/9c, CBS